CHAPTER III

THE LOVE-SONG OF HAR DYAL


The bugler was sounding the second mess-call as the Resident's carriage
drew up before the steps of the Mess verandah on which stood all the
officers of the regiment, dressed in the white drill uniform worn at
dinner in India during the hot weather. From the carriage Major Norton,
a stout, middle-aged man in civilian evening dress, descended stiffly
and shook hands with the Commandant of the battalion, Colonel Trevor,
who had come down the steps to meet him and whose guest he was to be.

On the verandah Wargrave was introduced to him by the Colonel and took
his outstretched hand with reluctance; for Frank felt stirring in him a
faint jealousy of the man who was Violet's legal lord and an indefinite
hostility to him for not appreciating his charming wife as he ought. And
while the Resident was shaking hands with the others Wargrave looked at
him with interest.

Major Norton was a very ordinary-looking man, more elderly in appearance
than his years warranted. He was bald and clean-shaved but for scraps of
side-whiskers that gave him a resemblance to the traditional
stage-lawyer of amateur theatricals, a likeness increased by his heavy
and prosy manner. It was hard to believe that he had ever been a young
subaltern, though such had once been the case, for the Indian Political
Department is recruited chiefly from officers of the Indian Army. But he
was never the gay and light-hearted individual that most junior subs.